Seriously! I always thought somewhere in the back of my mind, "you know, some day putting pen to paper could go the way of the dinosaur..." Well it truly has my friends. When writing out a single page with a pen gives you a cramp in your wrist that requires an Aleve, then you know shit is pretty much dead. I never thought I'd have to practice writing to actually keep my hands in strong physical condition. Doing it to keep your mind sharp is understandable, but as an actual physical exercise my mind is pretty much blown. I blame it partially on my new journal not having nearly enough margins. Yeah... that's it. But seriously, that is obnoxious when your hand has to keep readjusting to fit stuff on a page? You know!? Do yah?! Naw, I'm totally full of shit.
The whole hand cramp from writing is only half serious though. I also cranked out some new progressions for songs tonight that I'll probably either forget or decide are ridiculous later. One on piano and another on guitar that is half waltz and then suddenly in 4/4. Are you aloud to do that? It kind of doesn't work, I'll admit it up front, but I'm giving it a shot. The problem nowadays is that I get this far over and over and over again, and then vocal melodies and lyrics just never come. It's pretty damn frustrating. I've got nearly a dozen things I've been sitting on that are about a quarter done for a long time now and I want to punch them all in the face for mocking me and not being finishable.
In other news, old man winter is here in full force and I find myself with less and less desire to leave the house as we trudge deeper into the depths of the season. Today at work I was thinking of all the fun stuff I could be doing with my night and how much, but opted to sit around eating spaghetti and beating myself up over writing lyric-less songs. I also thought about how much easier I could get through the next day of being hungover if only it were warm out. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's dark when I go to work and when I come home from work and for all I know, because I work in almost entirely windowless environments, the sun never actually comes up. At least in the summer if I go to work at 9:00 and come home at 7:00 the sun's already up on my way and I get a few hours after.
As I dwelled on this on the way home tonight I came up with a off the wall theory that perhaps the reason I'm such a grumpier bastard about winter than all of my friends is because as a year round swimmer growing up January and February were always the most miserable months of the year. Right about this time I'd be getting burnt out when you're expected to be "catching your stride" into the end of the season, and you'd start getting pissed off and annoyed at all the people on the team because you spend all day every day with them and you forget they're actually your best friends, and then I'd be all disappointed because I wasn't living up to my own expectations... not to mention the whole jumping into a swimming pool after coming inside from sub-freezing temperatures and then going back out with your hair still wet. What miserable days those were... but March was always the best. High school season was over and all that was left would be championship meets for the YMCA team which no one cared about. The practices were easy and mostly optional and there was no stress. Follow that up with no practice at all from April to the end of May and warmer temperatures. Spring's the best. Fuck all ya'll haters that like winter for some crazy reason.
I'm 'bout to go hate on some winter by rapping myself up in blankets and frowning while I play video games. And there will be pajama pants... and a bath robe. Oh how there will be a bath robe.
